Re: Are 'best' universities being targeted

[seas.gwu.edu!mfeldman@uunet.uu.net (Michael Feldman)]

In article <SRCTRAN.93Aug5102729@world.std.com> srctran@world.std.com (Gregory 
Aharonian) writes:
>
>	If you read what I originally posted, I prefaced the posting
>with a comment on the meaningless of "best" rankings of universities.
>I made it quite clear that it was Barron's list, and that such lists
>should be taken with a grain of salt.  So calling me a snob is kind
>of a stretch (unless you know my feelings on non-physicists and 
>non-mathematicians :-)

See below.
>
>	I do believe that there exists utility-function rankings of
>universities (in terms of what they offer to their students, and
>the country).  I don't know what these functions are, but I do
>believe they exist, given that endless numbers of published rankings
>of universities do show strong correlations.

I don't think you can find any serious rankings that really report in
terms of what they offer to their country. Rankings like US News, Barron's,
etc., are journalistic exercises that probably have a grain of truth in 
them, but they tend to create self-fulfilling prophecies. If US News
declares a college "hot" (never mind whether it really is), that college
becomes hot, at least till the fad wears off.

One could argue that the typical _graduate_ rankings, which are usually
in terms of the size of the government-funded research coming in, measure
the importance of the universities to government sponsors. Whether this is
a good measure of utility to the nation is debatable, as I think you'd
be the first to admit! ("Pork" enters into the equation, too, as you know.)

>	And I believe that there will be little correlation between
>those universites with high rankings in terms of the influence their
>students and faculty will have on the software industry, and those
>universities receiving Ada9X money.

Not clear. Where do you get your statistics on universities and their
influence on industry? I am not aware of any? Are they just "feelings"?

>	Now that may be a good strategy or not.  I do not know.  But
>seeing as how the Ada9X people seem to be counting on this strategy
>as a major component in making Ada more widely used (a strategy I find
>very questionable), I do believe the strategy should be reexamined and
>and some data collected on the university process.  I do not think the
>Ada9X office has a deep enough understanding of the interactions
>between industry and academia to rely solely on their current academic
>strategy to see Ada succeed.

Actually, the Ada9X curriculum program is a competitive award program.
I think they have funded about 50% of the proposals, though I'm not sure
of this. They can only fund proposals that arrive over their wall; they
cannot fund proposals that are not submitted. You're not far from MIT -
go ask them why they haven't (as far as I know) submitted proposals.

MIT gets a lot of money from ARPA. Perhaps they wouldn't waste their time
writing proposals for $50k chunks of money. Who knows? Go ask 'em.

The schools that are getting the funding, overall, can use the money,
and as far as I can see, most of them are giving the government its 
money's worth. How can you be against this? It's something for the
little guy, who's delivering the goods. Hey, you can't have it both ways.

Mike Feldman